Trump's economic growth is a lot smaller than he bragged it would be
Trump insisted he could grow the economy more than Obama did. Nope.
Trump campaigned on the promise of absurdly high economic growth, specifically that the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) would reach 5 or 6 percent. Trump and Republicans also insisted that at the very least, they would beat President Obama’s record with a 3 percent annual growth in GDP.
But for the second year in a row, annual GDP growth still hasn’t reached 3 percent.
On Thursday, new economic data from the Commerce Department showed 2018 growth at a mere 2.9 percent, less than half of what Trump promised. The number is preliminary and could be revised, but economists told CNBC that if a revision happens, it would likely make the number even smaller.
And moving forward, even slower growth is predicted. “2018 will be the high-water mark for growth in the Trump administration,” Mark Zandi, an economist with Moody’s Analytics, told CNBC. He also predicted that the economy will shrink to a dismal 1.1 percent growth in 2020.
The GOP tax scam, signed into law in late 2017, was supposed to be “rocket fuel” for the economy. But while Wall Street banks and wealthy corporations celebrated the lavish tax giveaways they got from the GOP bill, families across the country were left out in the cold.
Wages for most Americans have either remained stagnant or barely increased. Meanwhile, Trump’s trade wars are wreaking havoc on farmers and devastating the economies of entire states.
There is other alarming economic data showing how millions of families are continuing to struggle in the Trump era. Experts are especially alarmed that a record number of Americans are falling behind on their car payments, which is a major red flag for economic problems because most Americans prioritize car payments ahead of credit cards and even mortgages.
As the April 15 tax deadline approaches, many families are furious at either smaller-than-expected refunds or shockingly high tax bills. Companies like Amazon, GE, and Netflix made hundreds of millions in profits and will see multi-million dollar tax refunds. But millions of Americans are seeing once again that Trump’s economy is tilted in favor of the rich and powerful, not middle-class families.
Trump is a man obsessed with size. He melted down over the crowd size at his inauguration, which was paltry compared to Obama’s. On the very afternoon of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he callously bragged that he now had the tallest building in New York City. Once, he even patted himself on the back for having a “very, very large brain.”
But his boasts about size often fail to meet expectations. The lackluster economic growth is just another in a long line of disappointments brought to America by Trump.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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